Who Cares? Emotional Labor within the System for Unaccompanied Children

Background

Unaccompanied children (UC) are undocumented immigrants under age 18 who are determined by authorities without a parent or guardian. When UC are detained by Border Patrol they enter a bureaucratic system that is part immigrant detention, part child welfare system before being released to a sponsor, most often parents, and begin deportation proceedings in immigration court. This UC system—both detention and child welfare—is implemented by non-profit organizations that subcontract with the government. Like other bureaucrats implementing direct service supports for vulnerable populations, caring for UC requires a high degree of emotional labor—the work associated with managing others’ emotions. Like other areas of care work, work with UC is predominately implemented by women; due to the linguistic requirements within the UC system, Latinas, many of whom are first- or second-generation immigrants, are overrepresented in the UC care system. Consequently, the UC system relies upon immigrant labor for its implementation.

Methods

Data for this study comes from 65 in-depth interviews with UC system employees from September 2022 – June 2023. We partnered with an organization that is subcontracted to implement the UC system, including shelters, short term foster care, long term foster care, and other services. Interviews were recorded and transcribed and analyzed using qualitative analysis software. We used an inductive approach to identify themes within the data. Inter-coder reliability and memoing provided additional checks on the trustworthiness of our analysis.

Results

Following Wingfield’s (2017) research that emphasizes that care work is racialized as it is gendered, we explore how UC systems rely upon immigrant staff to care for children. In this paper, we develop the concept of translational work as emotional labor in a variety of settings. First, immigrant staff translate (for) America: they tell the stories of unaccompanied children in their communities, advocating for UC inclusion in their public interactions in daily life. Second, to UC in their care, immigrant staff attempt to frame the US as a welcoming, using their own biographies as evidence. Third, as the first people who linguistically understand kids within the system, immigrant staff are the people who hear kids’ traumatic stories first while ensuring other staff members accurately document children’s experiences. Fourth, as bilingual staff members, immigrant staff are also the people who reach out to the parents of UC and provide assurance that children are safe and translate what comes next. And sixth, for their colleagues, bilingual staff members provide clarity with language and culture to ensure that children’s cultural needs are respected within the system.

Conclusion and Implications

We emotional labor within the care system is unrecognized within the care system. Although their linguistic skills are valued and highly sought after on the job market, there is little recognition that employees are absorbing the traumatic migration stories of children while simultaneously living within a society that criminalizes immigration while relying upon immigrants to implement the UC system.